1. “Now you, son of man, take a sharp sword, use it as you would a barber’s razor, and shave your head and beard. Then take a set of scales and divide the hair.
2. You are to burn up a third of it in the city when the days of the siege have ended; you are to take a third and slash it with the sword all around the city; and you are to scatter a third to the wind, for I will draw a sword to chase after them.
3. But you are to take a few strands from the hair and secure them in the folds of your robe.
4. Take some more of them, throw them into the fire, and burn them in it. A fire will spread from it to the whole house of Israel.
5. “This is what the Lord God says: I have set this Jerusalem in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.
6. But she has rebelled against My ordinances with more wickedness than the nations, and against My statutes more than the countries that surround her. For her people have rejected My ordinances and have not walked in My statutes.
7. “Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: Because you have been more insubordinate than the nations around you — you have not walked in My statutes or kept My ordinances; you have not even kept the ordinances of the nations around you —
8. therefore, this is what the Lord God says: See, I am against you, Jerusalem, and I will execute judgments within you in the sight of the nations.
9. Because of all your detestable practices, I will do to you what I have never done before and what I will never do again.